on my tm 800 (3 years old almost) I've always had the problem that the external vga signal is very bad. If I connect a decent crt screen it looks pretty fuzzy. It's really too bad to work with (it's ok for a beamer or very low resolution).

What I'm asking is, if anyone here has had a port replicator connected to this computer and tried the vga connector on the port replicator, is how is the replicator's vga signal? Is it any better? (Does the port replicator actually have a vga connector?)

I would like to connect an external screen, and I'm thinking that maybe the bad vga quality is caused by the wiring or so, which could be different on the replicator.

IIRC the bad signal was caused by a flaw in the original series' mainboard design. Acer would exchange the board when you sent it in since it was covered by warranty, but it's too late for you to work that way I'm not sure - didn't the replicator contain its own vga chip? It would propably be hard to get to work on linux, then. If you're lucky, it's done similar to the Samsung X series replicator, where the signal is routed through the port. OTOH, this most likely means that you're still stuck with the bad signal quality.

Thanks.
Actually Acer changed my motherboard (and wlan card, and touchpad... without me complaining about them) when I sent it in a while ago because of a bad audio jack. I haven't tried vga since (because it looked so horrible before), maybe I should try it again now, who knows?

The Acer tm 800 might be old, but it is a great laptop. - So I tried to upgrade it. Here's what I did:

RAM Upgrade
As it isn't covered by warranty any more I took it apart for cleaning out the dust and noticed that there is a 2nd RAM Chip under the keyboard which was easy to exchange. So I did an upgrade to 1 GB RAM and it works like a charm.

HDD
Exchanging the HDD is an easy task as you do not need to take out the keyboard. So I inserted a 100 GB disc. Bios knows it. So I just booted from a LiveCD and used rsync for a disc copy.

The upgrade wasn't that expensive (207.80 EUR), but the speed gain is great.

As I mentioned Acer replaced my mainboard as well. I connected a 17" tft a couple of days ago, and the image quality looked almost perfect! Actually, I'm waiting for my new 19" tft right now, it should come with the mail today

I bought a 1GB RAM module a couple of days ago, but Linux only seems to recognize around 900MB, which is bad because I also wanted to continue using one of the old 256MB module which came with my travelmate. I tried both sockets (on the bottom and underneath the keyboard), but it doesn't seem to matter if I put in 1GB or 1.3GB of RAM, Linux only shows 900MB in top and meminfo:

Hello, it's quite hard to pickup where we left, but I didn't think anyone had yet been able to really use the smartcard reader. I managed to read out my Belgian eID card succesfully with it today. It works like a charm now. Very cool indeed . I'll try to put more info on the wiki (shall i delete the old CardMan4000 stuff?). The only problem is that I can't help you with applications (for non-Belgians).

Btw is anyone still really using this laptop (aka. how many have broken down already?)? I might get around to buying a new laptop soon, but it seems quite hard to find laptops that really outperform this one by far (as to Pentium-M's for instance). It would also mean giving up on the curved keyboard which I really always have enjoyed, the nice formfactor, and also the non-CrystalBright lcd (those new lcd's reflect too much in my opinion).

I'm also interested in some new CFLAGS for use with march=Pentium-M for the new gcc-3.4.

After 3.5 years and a recent hdd upgrade (the original one broke) and some additional RAM (1.3GB, now also recognized by my kernel) my tm 800 (1.3GHz) is still working perfectly.
You're right, the new laptop screens are just terrible. How can you work with those? It's amazing to see how very much technology industry follows fads.

I am still using my tm291lmi that's similar to the 803. I am buying now a new battery and I need a new dvdwriter as I have recently broken mine (the notebook has fallen down). What sort of dvdwriter use the 803?_________________Sideraliswww.sideralis.orgPichttp://blackman.amicofigo.com/galleryArduinohttp://www.arduino.cc
Chi aveva potuto aveva spaccato
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ANyhow, I've got a TravelMate 800, and for the first time I'm looking into getting bluetooth working on this thing ( I want to get a headset working for use w/ kphone ).

I'm wondering how the heck to start... apparently I don't need a dongle 'cuz the 800 has built-in bluetooth, right? There's a couple buttons on the front, below the mouse pad - I know one is for wifi, and so the other must be for bluetooth. I've followed the Acer 803 howto for bluetooth, and the gentoo bluetooth HOWTO, but I'm left completely unable to determine what to do next.... the bluetooth button on the laptop never causes the led to light up, and I can't seem to find any device regarding bluetooth - via lspci, hcitool,hciconfig, etc... I think I'm missing some basic conceptual detail somewhere along the lines. ( note that I don't yet have an actual bluetooth device - I'm just first trying to make sure the built in bluetooth device is working on the laptop )

I installed the bluez stuff ( libs and utils ). I have the bluetooth kernel module running. I started /etc/init.d/bluetooth. etc. etc.

First setup and start everything. I already did this years ago so I'm not sure any more if the wiki is correct. I can look into my config if you want. Then press the bluetooth button! Don't forget that please (also make sure you didn't disable bt in the bios or in the Windows Acer Notebook Manager). You should really see the blue light since I believe this is only a hardware thing. Next, you should see something in dmesg (and a small burst of HD reads).

Then on for the audio part, you will need bluetooth-alsa (at sourceforge). Btsco will only give you mono. If you have a stereo headset you will need a2dp. This works but not 100%. It's only a first quick hack, so it's very premature and unstable unfortunately, and also a hell to set-up something useful with it (I'm still trying to figure this out though I have it working in a bareable but limited way).

I think you can find most of these things on the net yourself. For specific, detailed problems and pitfalls ask me...

I went through both the gentoo on TM803 wiki/manual, and also through the gentoo bluetooth howto, and everything seems to be fine - I can start the bluetooth modules and run the bluetooth init script... I guess the TM800 uses the "blutonium" driver via the bcm203x kernel module??

The thing that has me feeling unconvinced that everything's working right, though, is the fact that the bluetooth LED on my laptop doesn't light up, and pressing the button does not appear to have any effect whatsoever ( the led never goes on, and nothing ever shows up in dmesg - unlike what goes on with the wifi led and button ). Does that light only go on when an actual bluetooth _device_ ( such as headset or mouse or phone or whatever ) is attached? Or is it supposed to light up soon as the actual built-in _adapter_ ( blutonium ) is functioning?

I don't want to go off and spend 60+ bucks on a headset, just to get it home and find that the built-in adapter in my 800 isn't working.

Another question: would the bcm203xx ( blutonium ) driver/module still somehow load successfully, even if there were no such adapter actually installed in my laptop? ( I know this wouldn't be the case with most/all other forms of hardware, but since I'm completely new to bluetooth, and since things don't _appear_ to be working quite right, I can't help but wonder whether there is some sort of exception occuring in this specific circumstance ).

That would explain why everything all seems to be working from a software perspective, but yet the hardware led indicator and button seem to fail to have any activity.

The led really should light up. I'm pretty sure this is related only to hardware. In my country the "B" in the model name Acer Travelmate 803LCiB indicates that the model is equipped with bluetooth (not all 803 models are). The led blinks (like every second) when the device is just on, and blinks faster or remains on when a connection has been established. You really can't miss it. You really need to get this to work in my opinion before you look into the software. Can you check if it still works in Windows?

The only piece of linux software that I have seen that can influence the led is the acerhk (or related) drivers for the extra keyboard buttons. They give you control to turn the led off or on. Make sure you never fiddled with these things or put something in your system to always turn the led off.

So first, make sure you have the hardware support and see that it still works fine plz.

I just went to the bios to check if what I said was correct. I was wrong in (at least) two things: There is no option to disable bt in the bios, i was confusing this with the option for the infrared port. Secondly, an interesting thing: The led already is on at the POST-selfcheck and also when in the bios, and during grub. Then, when linux is booting, it goes out for some time, until the drivers are loaded, and it goes back on. So the drivers do have some effect apparently.

My advice to you is thus still to first wonder if you have the right hardware, and next to try to get the led to blink during early boot-up or while in the bios...

Well I finally figured it out late last night... even though my 800 does in fact have a bluetooth led and button sitting right next to the functioning wifi led/button.... the darned thing doesnt actually _have_ a built-in bluetooth adapter....

And even though there was no actual physical bluetooth hardware on the laptop, all the software ( deamons, modules, drivers ) were nonetheless able to successfully load with no warnings or complaints - which only exasperated my confusion: "well, there's an obvious bluetooth button here.... and everything I've read on the web says that the 800 has bluetooth built-in.... and the modules and drivers load without any issues.... so why is the stupid thing not working!?" (c8=

I was finally able to determine this with certainty using lsusb, which was what I was looking for: something that would indicate which adapter ( if any ) I had in my laptop.

At one point I had tried that, but thought that lsusb would only show results for attached external bluetooth devices, rather than for the adapter itself.

The output of lsusb does not display any results concerning a bluetooth adapter, so the bluetooth led and button present on my TM800 is unattached to any hardware and thus non-functioning.

The thing with the TM800 is, the very early models didn't have a Bluetooth adapter. Only the 800LCiB and later models did include the adapter, although the button was on all models. When I bought my TM800, I considered buying the B model, but it wasn't worth the 100,- EUR difference. I'd still like to have one, but so far I could do without as well.

About your earlier question, I'm also still using my TM800 happily after 3.3 years. It even survived me recently moving to Japan to be a research student. I only had to have the display repaired last year (backlight trouble), covered by guarantee. It was a bit of a pain since I had to send it in 4 times until they found it, but still. I also added some more memory (768mb now), a new HDD (80Gig Samsung MP0804H, fast & silent!) and a DVD-Writer (Toshiba SD-R6472). I see no reason to buy a new one soon, although it's sometimes rather tempting. _________________Violence is the last resort of the incompetent --Isaac Asimov
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